Twisted (Charlie Weasley)

Chapter Fifty-One

"Everything will be okay Eliza." I said softly as I released her from a tight hug, "You have to believe that it is true... otherwise there isn't any point in fighting."

She gave me a smile, "Go on... there are other people who need your help more than I do Indigo." She said softly, "From what people have told me, you are an extraordinary healer... and right now, there are a whole lot of people out there who need healing. Go be the healer, the hero, that you are destined to be."

I gave her one last look over before taking a sigh and tightening my grip on my wand. Maybe that is why I decided to come and fight in this battle... but I knew that wasn't the truth. I came to fight because I didn't want people to keep on looking at me as the girl who got lucky, or as the girl who would always have some part of bad in her. I didn't want to be seen as Bellatrix Lestrange's legacy any longer. I wanted to create some sort of amazing future where everyone would look at me and see that I was good. That I was a hero, or an amazing healer, even if they looked at me and thought 'Wow... That is Arthur Weasley's mother... she must be amazing.' Any of those would be better than the looks I was getting now. The judgment I was being put through for simply breathing.

All around me people were suffering, and here I was pitying my story once again. All around me curses were flying every which way. Some narrowly missing me, others that I blocked with ease. All of them being sent at me by people who thought they knew my story. I was the girl who betrayed them, who left them to fight with the order and become a bloodtraitor. I was the disappointment that Bellatrix and Rodolophus Lestrange would never get over. Somehow I had become their legacy at the same time that they had become mine. Our destinies seemed to be so tied together that for a long time I didn't think I would ever be able to escape it. 

Everything was going to change though, I knew that... and all of that was confirmed the moment I dashed around the corner. My wand was raised, my senses completely alert, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight I was about to see. It had been sixteen years since she had last stood before me this closely. I could practically feel the heat escaping from her flesh. I could feel her breath on my skin. Her skin was greyish. Azkaban had done that to her... and she was thinner than I ever remember her being when I was younger. Azkaban had plagued her with that. Even her hair was different. Still as wild as I remember it being, but now it was streaked with a grey that seemed to scream against the blackness of the rest of her hair. It frizzed every which way. It fell into her face, shot out above her head... nearly hide her striking grey eyes. But they starred at me in a wicked way. Her lips were jerked into something that could have almost been called a smile... but that would mean feeling happiness, and I knew better than anyone that Bellatrix Lestrange didn't feel happiness. She felt satisfaction.

This satisfaction brought a smirk to her face unlike one I had ever seen before. This satisfaction brought her tongue to her dry lips where she cheekily gave them a lick. Her fingers danced across a wand... it wasn't her wand. I didn't know whose wand it was, but I would never forget the curved stick that had sent a curse after curse at me during my youth. For years that wand had plagued me with nightmares, sent chills down my spine despite the fact that it could do me no harm as the wand was nothing without the user... and the user was locked up in Azkaban... only here she stood. Slim, dressed in black, with just the same mad look in her eye that had haunted me for as long as I could possibly remember. 

For a moment both of us stood without saying any words, but the whole time I knew I was ready. I would be ready no matter what curse she sent my way. It was something I didn't know I was ready for until she was there, standing in front of me. Perhaps that is why I summoned the courage to speak first.

"Aren't you going to try and kill me?" I asked her, my voice didn't waver or shake. My body didn't stiffen with fear. It was possibly the most confident I had been in my entire life. "Isn't that what you have wanted since you broke out of Azkaban? To kill me for embarrassing you? For walking away from all the plans you had for me? For being a complete and utter disappointment?"